Friday, 9 February 2007

The potential for game studies in my view lies in the possibility of offering an analysis of computer games and game cultures as critical locations for understanding the role of digital technologies in mediating and constituting the social interaction and organization of subjects in late modern information societies.

2 comments:

These are some of the questions that Boellstorff believes we can address with a cultural orientation to game studies:

"What does it mean to be a person? What does itmean to interact? What is a body? What does it mean to be equal or unequal, similar ordifferent?"

And here he discusses the practical applications,

"In the remainder of this article, I would like to argue that a close alliance withanthropology can benefit game studies. The moniker games and culture accuratelyreflects how for the emerging discipline of game studies culture acts as a secondarypivot term alongside game to define the field of inquiry. Indeed, culture is oftendescribed as encompassing the notion of game (and the notion of play, to which gameis closely allied in English). Given this state of affairs, anthropology (a) can providegame studies with frameworks for theorizing culture and (b) can provide amethodology—participant observation—for investigating games and culture."

While this text appears to be concerned with a debate between narratology and ludology, the questions and issues it raises are critical to the development of a more culturally oriented game studies, as this is orientation is a practical way to move beyond the prior binary arguments as well as enabling researchers to explore more diverse and potentially more valuable territory.

Abstract:One of the main aims of game studies is to investigate to what extent and in what wayscomputer games are currently transforming the understanding of and the actual construction of personal and cultural identities. Computer games and other digital technologies such as mobile phones and the Internet seem to stimulate playful goals and to facilitate the construction of playful identities. This transformation advances the ludification of today’s culture in the spirit of Johan Huizinga’s homo ludens.

Concluding remarks:Do we as an academic community of game researchers accept the coexistence of competing frameworks of interpretation, in accordance with the tradition of the humanities? This seems to be Jenkins’s position, and it is one I agree with, when he states that both narratology and ludology can be equally productive. Or, do we adhere to the paradigmatic character of academic progress following Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science? This seems to be Aarseth’s position when he rules out narratology as an outdated paradigm. If we want game studies to really come of age academically, we should not only further develop different theories and methods but also make the latter the object of our research and discussion.